I didn’t wonder. The press, in Rivertown to film me for the Sweetie Fairbairn story, would use the reminder of Elvis Derbil in a sidebar alongside whatever they presented about me. It could be diverting. For sure, it would be funny, to everyone except the lizards.
“They hauled out the sawhorses ten minutes after we hung the sheet,” Leo said.
“They don’t realize news cameras have zoom lenses?”
Leo laughed, shaking his head. “You saw Benny?”
“Dressed up to guard road and dunkers alike.”
“Truly the icing on the doughnut. Rivertown will be on everyone’s lips tonight.”
Trust Leo to warm even the coldest day.
I turned to Endora. “You’re wasting your time with him, you know.”
She curtsied. Her sundress of tangerine squid and chartreuse fish cavorting in a neon yellow sea matched Leo’s shirt.
I raised one of my paper bags. “Come in. I have Ho Hos.”
I made coffee and we sat on the lawn chairs in my kitchen. I gave them Ho Hos on paper plates and a criminal’s-eye view of my last twenty-four hours.
“Sweetie Fairbairn is being blackmailed, Dek?” Endora asked when I finished.
“That’s what she inferred,” I said, “but the way she said it sounded like she hadn’t yet received a demand.”
“Which she would have been able to pay,” Leo said. “The woman gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
“Easily,” I said.
“Andrew Fill?” Leo asked.
“I’m having trouble seeing why he’d need to kill the clown or the guard. He’s paying back the money, or was, until he disappeared.”
“There’s always the scenario that Sweetie Fairbairn killed the guard herself, perhaps because he overheard something,” Leo said. “Her running away makes her look guilty as hell.”
“I’m hoping it makes her look innocent,” I said. “I’m hoping she ran because she had no choice.”
My landline phone rang a minute after they left. The answering machine clicked on to announce that it was full. The Channel 5 reporter on the other end was having none of that. He started arguing. I was tempted to pick up, to tell him that he was screaming at a machine. Then I had a vision of myself, as I’d been but an hour earlier, yelling at my windshield, and I regarded the reporter with more compassion. He and I were fellow travelers on an increasingly bumpy road.
Most of the messages on my machine were from the local television stations and newspapers. Mixed in with them were a call from city hall, saying I had to remove my banner immediately, and one from the local water and sewer utility, telling me my payment was late. Again.
I couldn’t afford a municipal citation. I went upstairs and pulled in the offending banner.
Coming down, I thought to check for messages on my cell phone, switched off since I’d gone to the police station. Leo had called twice, before he and Endora had decided to come over. Amanda had called six times, increasingly exasperated that I wasn’t picking up. Jennifer Gale had called once, reminding me I’d stood her up for dinner the previous night, and saying that my being detained for police questioning was no excuse for stiffing her on the biggest story in town. Then she laughed.
The one call I really needed-from Sweetie Fairbairn, telling me she was all right, but in hiding-hadn’t come.
Nor had the one call I’d expected.
I called his number. The answering machine at his office picked up. I hung up and tried his cell phone.
“Timothy Duggan,” he said.
“Dek Elstrom.”
“You’ve got balls, Elstrom, calling me.”
“Heard from Sweetie?”
“If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you.”
“I’ll take that as a negative. We’ve got to talk to Andrew Fill. In person.”
“I wouldn’t go anywhere with you. You’re radioactive.”
“I didn’t kill your guard.”
“Says you.”
“I didn’t finger Sweetie for killing him, either.”
“You said she was there, kneeling over the body. Same thing.” He hung up.
I thumbed the redial button. “You need to find her, to protect her. And we need to find Fill, to learn what he knows.”
“Let the cops find Fill. As for Ms. Fairbairn, somebody is out to kill her. She’s on the run, unprotected. She’s safest that way.” The phone went dead.
I walked to the window. Benny Fittle’s Maverick and his barricade had disappeared. The news vans hadn’t. Four of them had pulled up in front of the turret and raised their broadcast antennae like alien periscopes, ready to transmit the first moment I showed my face.
It wasn’t even noon, but I was exhausted. I dropped into the electric blue La-Z-Boy.
I didn’t see Sweetie Fairbairn as a killer. I didn’t see her hiring someone to cut a clown’s rope to drop him off a roof. I didn’t see her with a gun, shooting her guard.
I didn’t see Andrew Fill for any of that, either. He had a motive-revenge-to want to harm Sweetie Fairbairn, but she’d thrown the man a lifeline, the chance to pay the money back and escape jail.
I rubbed my eyes. It didn’t help. I still couldn’t see anything else.
CHAPTER 23.
Sometimes, when I call Amanda, I forget and think that nothing has changed, even though I’m dialing a new daytime number. The illusion lasts only until her phone gets picked up, because it’s never Amanda who answers. It’s always her assistant, Vicki, or an electronic device.
“Amanda Phelps’s office.”
“Hi, Vicki. It’s Dek. Is the tycoon in?”
Vicki always laughs at that, but I always suppose that’s because she’s paid to. That morning, though, she was all business. She must have heard the news.
“I’ll see if I can find her, Mr. Elstrom,” she said, with just a bit of frost.
Amanda picked up in less than fifteen seconds. “Are you all right?” Like the last time I’d called, there were other voices in her background.
“In the news, but I guess you know that.”
“You’re safe and being looked after?”
“I’ve got a high-profile attorney. About the news, they’ll probably trot out the old stuff, Amanda.”
“It’s already started.”
“You? Your father?”
“Both of us, popular again.” She forced a laugh. It was brittle.
“How badly will it affect what you’re doing?”
“It will pass.”
“They’re waiting, Amanda,” Vicki’s voice said in her background.
“Just a second,” she told her. Then, to me, “Listen, Dek, something’s happened.”
“What?” I asked.
“Amanda,” Vicki said.
“I’ll call you later.”
She hung up.
No surprise, the one-two stabbing of Sweetie Fairbairn’s bodyguard and her own disappearance led the noon television news broadcasts. No surprise, either, that in the absence of other developments, they trotted me out, via video. They played footage, recorded the night before, of me skulking out of the police station, then seeing the reporters, waving and smiling like a crooked alderman.
When the video ended, the anchor wrinkled his sincere, spray-tanned brow. “Regular viewers will remember Vlodek Elstrom for his role in the Evangeline Wilts trial. Elstrom, a sometimes records researcher, was accused of falsely authenticating bank records for Mayor Wilts’s defense. Elstrom, husband at the time of Amanda Phelps, daughter of community leader and businessman, Wendell Phelps, maintained his innocence. And, in fact, charges were subsequently dropped.
“Now the shadowy Elstrom has reappeared, this time amid the murky details surrounding the disappearance of missing heiress Sweetie Fairbairn. Police are not yet willing to discuss Elstrom’s alleged role in the Fairbairn case, saying only that he was brought in for questioning last evening as a person of interest in her disappearance. Elstrom has not been charged in the murder of Ms. Fairbairn’s bodyguard, Robert Norton. However, Elstrom has retained the services of John Peet, one of Chicago’s most prominent, and expensive, defense attorneys, leading some to question just how extensive Elstrom’s involvement is, and who is going to pay for such a high-ticket legal defense. Attempts to reach Peet, Elstrom, Wendell Phelps, and his daughter Amanda, a wealthy philanthropist in her own right, have been unsuccessful.”